USE AND ABUSE OF CONSTITUTIONAL CHECKS.
Ssa—The slow and imperfect progress made in many reforms urgently re- Inked by the country has greatly indisposed men's minds to constitutional government, and created aspirations after an autocracy ; and this feeling has been increased tenfold since the commencement of the war. I should -despair of the future if I thought this a legitimate conclusion from the premises—if there were no alternative except such a Government as we now have, or an absolute rule which would soon become tyranny. I hope to show that it is not the existence of a popular assembly which impedes thetnarch of government, but the departure of that assembly, and of the nation which elects it, from their true functions that the thing to be de- plored is the abuse, not the use, of constitutional checks ; and that the re- medy lies, not in abolishing Parliament, nor in silencing the voice of the People, but in confining Parliament to its proper duties, and restricting the interference of the People to proper occosions. I shall render my meaning more clear by some illustrations. In private life, what is the household which best fulfils its objects, and in which the work is done most perfectly and harmoniously ? Not that, assuredly, in which the servants are left without control or fear of responsibility ; nor that in which no discretion is allowed them, no confidence placed in them, but they are the victims of unremitting interference and degraded into mere machines: no, it is that household in which—each servant being first care- fully selected—they are allowed a certain freedom in their several depart- meats; a certain trust is reposed in them that what they have been hired to do, and have undertaken to do, they will do well ; and the master's eye looks to results as the subjects of praise or blame, indifferent to the processes by which those results are obtained. You will never have a good cook or groom or gardener, as long as you persist in following them through their several occupations—suggesting this, forbidding that, criticizing one step, ridiculing another, depriving the unfortunate dependent of all freedom of will. If you are wise, you will reserve your authority for the dismissal of the servant, if the meals are ill-dressed, the horses badly groomed, or the garden untrimmed • and if, on the contrary, the results are unimpeachable, you will not embarrass a liberty of action which is so successful. If this be true of inferior servants, how much more is it true of those who, although in one sense servants, as being hired by you and liable to dismissal, are yet in another sense guides and governors by your own election. You exercise an ultimate control over your instructor or your physician, by dis- charging him, if, from your mind or your health not improving, you convict or suspect him of incompetency. But until you take this final step, and as long as the master or the doctor whom you have placed over yourself holds his office, you pay him obedience, and submit unhesitatingly to his guidance. You do not teach your instructor how to teach you ; you do not prescribe to your physician how be is to cure you. Is not the applicability of this reasoning to a nation aud its government already apparent ? Let not a nation abjure its power of selecting and cashiering its governor ; but let it abstain from petty and perpetual inter- ference with the governor it has selected, so long as it chooses to retain him. Until it cashiers its ruler, let it obey him submissively. It is unnecessary, in an age when the maxim 'Le Roi algae et no gouverne pas" is so well known, and in a country in which our admirable Sovereign acts so conscientiously on that maxim—it is unnecessary to say, that throughout these remarks, I mean by the word ruler or governor the Prime Minister for the time being ; or to point out that such ruler is vir- tually, though not formally, appointed by the House of Commons. The Point to which I tend is this—that it is of vital importance that the Nation, through its representatives, should retain the right of appointing and dis- missing their ruler ; but that it is not of vital importance, but, on the con- trary, highly prejudicial to the nation itself, that the people, or its repre- sentatives, should fetter and harass theY action of their ruler as they at present do.
What heart can a man have to govern well, to devise original measures, to attempt beneficial reforms, if at every step his career is to be impeded by the cheeks, the counsels, or the criticisms of the assembly who selected him ; and whom he may reasonably, and without impeachment of his modesty, suppose to have selected him as being wiser than themselves and fit to guide and govern them ? It is clear that he must resign all hope of governing in any high sense of that word, and must be content to aifminister the government. He must be in fact, what he is in name, a mere minister. But then, if he be only a minister, who is the ruler ? Not the Sovereign, I have already shown. It is, then, the assembly which, not content with its legislative functions nor with its -ontrol over the executive power, as- sumes to be the Executive itself. What we now suffer from is the existence, not of a constitutional government, but of an unconstitutional one ; for the confusion of the executive and legislative functions is at variance with the fundamental principles of the British constitution. It does not obtain even in Republican America. Again, if the House of Commons trespass on the executive power, it is paid in its own coin, by being trespassed upon by its constituents. As the right and duty of Parliament is to appoint and remove the Executive, but not to interfere with it, so the right and duty of the Nation is to appoint and (indirectly, by petition and agitation) dissolve the Parliament, but to leave its action unfettered. The contrary is unhappily the case. Moat of the Members of the House of Commons are under the same awe of their constituents as the Prime Minister is under of the House of Commons. They are as little able to play their part freely as he is. The same slavish submission, the same absence of independent and original action, charac- terizes the one as the other.
Though far from indifferent to politics, I have always refused, on these principles, to sign any petition to Parliament. I have aided to choose the Parliament., that it, and its selected Minister, may govern me, not that I may govern them. "But how," it is objected, "without petitions, can Parliament know the wishes of the country ?" My answer is, that its duty is not to govern us according to our wishes, but according to what it thinks best. If it does not know better than we do what is good for us, it is not fit to be a Parliament. The only petition I could sign consistently, would be a petition to the Crown to dissolve Parliament as unworthy. These observations are general, and not meant to apply particularly to the present time, when neither Minister nor Parliament seem to me de- serving of much confidence. But the broad lesson I would inculcate is, to the Country—select good representatives, and trust them ; and to the House of Commons—select a good Minister, and support him.
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